This invention relates to the intersection of monetary economics, finance, central banking, commercial banking, electronic payments, as well as computer science, and electronic data processing.
Modern financial and monetary system rests on a fundamental assumption that money is fungible, which results in monetary transactions and balances customarily being expressed in terms of amounts. The resultant loss of the identity, and therefore the history, of discrete units of account that make up each amount masks the rich informational content of financial flows, creating shortcomings for monetary policy, fraud and illicit activity prevention, marketing, and other challenges of the modern world.
The rise in computer processing power and storage capacity over the past decades has inspired various attempts to apply computer technology to financial transactions, resulting, among other things, in the recent rise in popularity of “digital” currencies, such as Bitcoin and its variations.
It is customary for such technologies to represent monetary values (often referred to as “coins”) with various forms of digital identification, but in such cases the values of the coins continue to be treated in terms of amounts. An amount is something that is further divisible or combinable and therefore something that doesn't respect the identity—and therefore the history—of each minimal and indivisible unit of account that makes up the amount. Despite being commonly referred to as “digital,” such technologies remain “analog” conceptually.